By Trey Riley, Vice President, Solutions Engineering at Within3
In those days, we were biased to believe that meeting key advisors in person was the best approach to nurturing a superior relationship, and ensuring we had the very best input and feedback to develop strategy; however, in a live meeting setting, there were several obvious problems.
Scheduling
The first challenge was scheduling a date and time that would work for a majority of external advisors. It was extremely unlikely to get all of our preferred advisors together at the same time due to their different home geographies while also coordinating with our internal stakeholders. Frequently, we vied for the experts’ time outside of their busy clinic schedules and several were also working with other companies in the same therapeutic area, including direct competitors. This would often result in recruiting second- and third-tier key opinion leaders (KOLs) due to unavailability of tier-one invitees. Meetings were frequently hosted over weekends at expensive venues to encourage attendance. Even under ideal circumstances, scheduling meetings could take up to six months, significantly delaying the market intelligence gathered from experts.
Quality of feedback
Productivity during meetings could be suboptimal due to several factors. Equal participation by attendees was lacking and this limited the quantity and quality of feedback. Some KOLs would do more listening than contributing during important discussions. This could be due to lack of interest or concern for potential disagreement with a well-respected expert (or often simply the loudest voice) that might extend the meeting and delay its adjournment. Due to the time constraints, many contributors seemed to be reacting in the moment and “shooting from the hip,” versus taking the time to thoughtfully consider different aspects of the issue being researched. Meeting fatigue affected attendees and moderators alike. The short windows of time to complete the session limited proper attention and focus on all our key topics, and occasional interruptions required some HCPs to leave the room in order to answer calls from their office or hospital.
Time for analysis
Following live advisory boards, we often struggled with the amount of time required to analyze the feedback, compare it to other data sources, and share it internally in order to make strategic decisions. That process could delay actions by several weeks to months, proving to be a significant disadvantage during launch scenarios where markets can change quickly and data gets old fast.
High costs
The costs associated with live meetings has been and continues to be high, consequently resulting in a lower ROI. Funding the travel, food and/or lodging for participants and staff was expensive and this can be further compounded by additional fees for renting facilities to host these sessions. In addition, agency fees may have added to the expense if we paid them to create an analysis or executive summary from the meeting.
Web meetings partially address communication gap
In the early 2000s, many life-sciences companies adopted video conference formats like Zoom and Microsoft Teams to reduce costs and avoid travel for advisors; however, it was the COVID epidemic that ushered in a greater reliance on live virtual meetings. Although the format changed to avoid the in-person setting, those “real-time” scenarios unfortunately faced similar difficulties because they were conducted at the exact same, finite moment in time for all involved. These alternatives led to cost savings, but unfortunately the workload balance needed for staff to schedule and analyze results didn’t improve much. Nor did the quality of participation and feedback.
Superior advancements for medical affairs excellence and digital transformation
Asynchronous (over-time) platforms began gaining prominence around 2013 and quickly provided a strategic advantage. They introduced an innovative solution to the challenges of in-person stakeholder meetings. Today they are viewed as an integral part of customer engagement that provides a superior stream of insights.
Some of the reasons why clients prioritize asynchronous virtual meetings as a unique data stream that fortifies their insights gathering process:
- Scheduling ease. Conducting asynchronous meetings drastically reduces timelines for planning and executing meetings with external experts. Clients can schedule ongoing engagements and complete sessions in weeks instead of months. Follow-up actions based on the insights obtained could be implemented during the same quarter. Allowing participants to share their insights when it is most convenient for the individual rather than the sponsor drives greater attendance and contributions by the most highly-desired top tier KOLs who no longer have to travel away from their clinical practices or personal lives.
- Improved insights capture. Asynchronous virtual meetings allow each participating advisor to have a voice and provide their individual thoughts and ideas regardless of time zone, or their native language. Many solution providers have seen nearly 100% engagement from participants. Today’s advanced platforms provide translation ability that allows KOLs to engage with other global experts who may not speak the same language.
Thanks to a longer period for participation (“over-time” meetings provide multiple days vs. a few consecutive hours) these experts can contribute feedback at their own pace. In this environment, participants are highly likely to engage in thoughtful discussion with peers and colleagues as KOLs collaborate and take the time to research specific topics. This yields significantly deeper and better insights.
This improved quality of feedback is demonstrated by both a significant increase in the number of transcript pages (doubling or tripling the average per participant) and the quantity of new thoughts and ideas that experts contribute per topic. This is a direct result of greater collaboration and thoughtful consideration.
- Cost effectiveness. This improved meeting format is far more budget conscious because it avoids the high costs associated with venues or travel. Consequently it produces a higher return on these investments. Typical budgets allocated for in-person meetings can now accommodate multiple asynchronous meetings. These financial efficiencies allow sponsors to conduct more frequent meetings with top advisors, potentially deepening their relationships, and recruit larger or more diverse audiences (e.g. specialists, primary care physicians, patients, payers etc.) to gain different perspectives.
- Accelerated understanding of strategy’s effectiveness. Today, advanced asynchronous platforms utilize AI to suggest follow-up questions which increase stakeholder engagement and deeper insights on key topics. AI can also be used to analyze feedback in real time and integrate it with other data streams to constantly monitor alignment with strategic pillars. This “always on” market intelligence capability improves strategic agility: a vital capability during pre-launch when insights may be harder to obtain; during post-launch, after competitors respond; or if the team pivots their approach to the market. These systems help teams eliminate hundreds of hours of analysis time and instead focus their efforts on making faster and more accurate decisions that impact strategy.
Asynchronous meetings are essential for better insights
While in-person meetings with key advisors are still needed, asynchronous meetings consistently provide higher-quality insights from the most valuable contributing stakeholders and are far more cost-effective. At minimum, asynchronous virtual meetings with key advisors should be treated as a necessary and separate data source that balances the insights generated from in-person Ad Boards.
Within3’s history of continuously improving the technology of virtual meetings shows us that in launch scenarios, the market will reset and competitors will adjust. How quickly and effectively companies predict and understand those changes will be either enhanced or limited by their use of asynchronous virtual meetings to capture and seamlessly integrate the critical insights it provides.
